yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna do
It's the smart move.
My 5 year old Sony CD-RW has been getting testy about reading/recognizing disks so I went on eBay and bought a brand new Sony CRX 230E drive that reads at 52x and burns at 32x...a hell of a lot faster than my old one.
It cost me $28 and that included the shipping.
Your best bet is eBay, or a second-hand computer store in your area. Let me emphasize again, the Inspiron 7500 is a very old portable computer; it was introduced in 1999. It will not work with modern devices in a predictable fashion.